August 14 (Renewables Now) - US renewables yieldco TerraForm Power Inc (NASDAQ:TERP) has contracted an affiliate of General Electric Co (NYSE:GE) to provide balance of plant services for each project in its 1.6-GW wind fleet in North America.

TerraForm Power has executed the 11-year framework agreement with the GE unit in early August, according to the company’s financial results release on Monday. The particular deal covers full-wrap, long-term service agreements (LTSAs) for turbine operations and maintenance (O&M) as well as other balance of plant services.

These LTSAs lock in cost savings at an amount that aligns with TerraForm Power’s targets and is roughly USD 20 million (EUR 17.6m) less than the comparable amount for the company’s wind fleet in 2017, the statement says.

The company noted that there will be a modest amount of transition costs and downtime to implement these contracts and added that it expects to start realising cost savings in the first half of 2019.